Always in the Best of Taste
by WhoresofBabylon
Summary: VelRoxie slash. It's pretty clear from the movie they had it going on - so how'd that happen, you ask? Ch. 3 up.
1. Roxie: What Really Happened

So I figure I would never have to write this thing if Velma weren't writing her goddamn memoirs. Memoirs, she calls it, like anyone's going to want to read them. I don't know why she's doing it, we're making plenty of money these days. The only thing I can think is that she's trying as usual to get one up on me. See, I know she's going to write whatever she thinks she can get away with about me, so instead of having to sue her for label and probably break up the act in the bargain I figure I'll just write my own memoirs. Besides, if anyone's going to write memoirs it should be me. Velma never did too good in English in high school, she told me.  
Anyway, you probably already know some stuff about me. Like that they arrested me last year for plugging Fred Casely, and you probably know I met Velma there for the heinous double murder of her husband and sister. She's crazy, that woman, and that's what you have to know from the start. Then Billy Flynn got us both off, and we had to go into show business together because no one wanted either one of us alone. She's mostly there for the shock value. She's kind of washed up now. Anyway, so me and her started an act together, and now we're doing fine, and the only shit part is I get to put up with her antics 24/7, seven days a week. Including these goddamn memoirs, which I have to write my version of so she doesn't screw me over.  
So, speaking of her screwing me over, that's the first thing you have to get straight. Velma Kelly never screwed me over. Or if she did, it wasn't my fault. I was a moth caught on the wheel, a burned-out butterfly. She was the one who was the lez before I ever came along. And in prison it's not like you can get at any men, right? I mean, it happens all the time in prison. I bet there have been dozens of sociologicolol studies about how when there are no men around women get a little crazy. But anyway it wasn't my fault, except I know she's going to say it was. So here's how it happened.  
I was sitting in the cigarette room, knitting some bootees for my soon to be born baby, who I tragically miscarried soon after I got out of prison. None of the papers gave a shit though, so you probably didn't hear. Anyway, so I was knitting bootees for my poor soon to be not born baby when Velma came up behind me. I pretended like I didn't see her, because she was getting kind of desperate for publicity lately and I figured she was just going to hit me up for some more. And she was. Oh, was she ever.  
She stood behind me, and I know she was twirling a cigarette around her mouth because some ashes fell on my neck. I turned around to wipe them off, and she said to me, "I know you want to fuck me."  
I was horrified, of course. You couldn't expect better language than that from a notorious double homicide murderess, but I've always believed in believing the best of people, and I believe she should be held to just as high a standard as many convent nuns, because we can all be as virtuous as a nun if we only try hard enough. Unless we have to tragically shoot an unscrupulous man in order to save the life of our unborn child, of course. Anyway, even if you ignore the language, what she said was inignorable. I have never been a lesbian. I love my ex-husband very much, and it's a shame he felt he needed to divorce me. So of course, I told her that.  
"I don't know what you're talking about, Velma Kelly. I love my husband very much. But I forgive you for your lying," I said to her.  
That was when she stuck her hand down my shirt. I pulled away, naturally, but there was a wall nearby so I couldn't go far. And then I passed out. I don't remember a thing, except it wasn't my fault that we ended up on the floor with no pants on. Anything else she tells you is a baldface lie.  
And that's how it started. 


	2. Velma: What Really Happened

She's never been anything but a childish copycat, right down to stealing my garter and that pitiful attempt to imitate my trademark. That move that's marvelously useful in court, where you cross your legs in just the right way so your dress slides down almost enough to be sinfully revealing.

I first noticed that one, of course, that day in the cigarette room, when she was--honest to God--knitting baby clothes. I don't really think it was actual knitting; there were holes all over the place and a piece of yarn about two feet long hanging out of the middle of whatever the hell it was. I think she really just spent hours practicing how to move the needles around and look busy, because the damn thing never got any longer or wider, just messier. I'll admit the baby scheme was about her one and only intelligent move in all the time I've known her, but she was taking it way overboard.

Something about her was different than usual, though. She'd fluffed her hair and put on her Publicity Dress (short, tight, and guaranteed to divert attention away from her lying mouth and onto her skinny little chicken legs). What got me was that she was usually so careful to look all foolishly neat and tidy, and this time the top two buttons of her dress were undone.

"Save it for home ec," I greeted, fishing around for my lighter.

She pretended to ignore me, but she's always been a terrible actress, and I saw her glance up at me out of the corner of her eye. I wandered up behind her, leaning over her shoulder to get a closer look at her tangle of yarn and holes. A few ashes from my cigarette dropped onto her shoulder, but she didn't move a muscle till I pulled up a nearby chair and gracefully arranged myself so I could watch her and throw out a few malicious remarks now and then.

While I was trying to think of some, she gave a polite sigh. "Miss Kelly, I really would appreciate it if you smoked elsewhere. It's terribly unhealthy for me and my unborn child."

I silently wondered if now was the right time to find a sarcastic way of expressing the fact that she'd been pregnant for several months now and still had the same scrawny waistline she'd always had.

"Rox, go fuck yourself," I offered casually and--I'd like to think, amicably--in response.

She rose from her chair, carefully laid down her yarn bundle, and slowly made her way across the room to my chair. I tried to keep myself nonchalant and indifferent, which normally would have been a piece of cake, except for the fact that she suddenly leaned forward and straddled me on the chair.

Her hand reached up to slide the cigarette from my lips, expertly flicking it onto the floor in one quick move, just the way I did. My immediate reaction was to wonder how she'd learned that. She was rotten with cigarettes. She dropped them, burned herself, choked on them. She was a shitty smoker, a complete amateur. The rest of her life wasn't much different.

I would have pushed her away, of course--I was much stronger and much braver. But that would have involved touching her, and knowing her, she would have run off to Momma whining that I'd tried to attack her or something.

So, apparently to avoid this, she attacked first.

It wasn't completely out of nowhere. She did say something first, although I must have blacked out at some point because I can't remember what it was. Something ridiculous to the effect of "I've seen the way you look at me", but I couldn't exactly reply "You mean with disdain?" because by this time she had her tongue in my mouth.

I guess I responded out of surprise. It had nothing to do with desire or even surrender, it was more just curiosity. But before I knew it, that goddamn curiosity had us on the floor and I was popping the rest of those stupid pearl buttons on her dress.

Well, like they say... curiosity killed the cat.


	3. Momma: What Really Happened

I tell you, those two girls, they have outdone themselves this time. You've just gotta laugh, or that's what I figure, even though I know damn well Miss High-and-Mighty Velma Kelly would no sooner hear one little giggle before she'd sue my ass off for defamation of character. Not Miss Roxie, though. Tell the truth, I still think she's a little too slow for that kind of action. She'd rather let her latest boytoy, that sweetheart stockbroker there, invest her cash for her than piss it away on lawsuits for fun. That's about all the good that stockbroker is to her anyway, and I'm here to tell you that flat out. She's funny as hell, trying so hard to make Vel jealous, when she wants it as bad as Vel does. And I don't think they ever stopped fucking. It's all for show. Everything they do is all for show, and that's the truth.

But I'm getting ahead of myself - you'll have to excuse me, I was never much of one for writing. I just figured with both Vel and Roxie out there publishing memoirs, both of them packed to the rafters with lies, it was time for someone to step in who actually knew what was what. Reading those things, you'd be wondering how the convents of Chicago ever managed to cope with losing two saints like those. Oh, they both know how to lay it on thick. But I figured that since people are buying up those memoirs like mad, there'll be a few people here and there who are gonna notice a few things wrong, like how neither of their stories makes any damn sense at all and if you put them together you might as well be reading ancient Egyptian for all the chance you'd have of figuring out what in hell really happened.

That's where I come in. See, I was the prison matron over on cell block east - Murderess Row, we used to call it. Ooh-wee, the women I saw come through that place! Oh, you've got mind-pictures of all the worst scum of society stabbing each other in the toilets, but I'll tell you straight that's just not true. You get all kinds of high-society broads stabbing each other in the toilets. Not with knives, of course: don't you believe I'd let that slip by me. Those girls are like children to me, and I'm not planning on having them killing one another on my watch. But you'd be surprised, the things women like that can find to fight each other with - and the reasons they can find to fight. I'll tell you another thing about the women who pass through Murderess Row: they never do anything halfway. They're all in there for what they call "crimes of passion" - you don't off your husband without what we like to call a passionate temperament. And that goes double for loving, too. These women, when they're not fighting they're fucking, and vice versa. Sometimes I think there just isn't room in their heads for anything else.

And that brings us around to Vel and Roxie. Whatever you could or couldn't figure out from their memoirs, you had to have figured out that they were screwing each other, right? They both admitted it - that's why they did it in the first place, you know. They were both writing a tell-all about the other one being a lezzie, and then Roxie caught wind of Vel's plans and they had to scramble to see who could get them out first. Then the publisher got wise and decided to put them out on the same day, and, well, it's been pretty nuts. Anyway, so the point is they were frigging around on the wrong side of the sheets, as my dear old mama would have put it, for a good six months there in jail. (Not just the sheets, either - bent over toilets, flat against walls You didn't hear that from Momma, though.) And no one could have proved my little theory better than those two, because when they weren't fucking, they were fighting, with each other, day and night. Man, the two of them would act like little five-year-old kids. "She stole my garter!" "Yeah, well she copied my hairstyle, Momma!" "Now she's smoking like me, Momma! Tell her to get her own life!" Sometimes I think it would have made no difference in my life if I went and worked in a day care.

So you'd think that's all you'd need to know, wouldn't you? They were in a block together, they fought, they fucked, they fought, they fucked some more. Oh, but you'd be missing all the juicy details, and isn't that what every redblooded American wants? Sex, lies, and more sex - that's all we care about.

Well, I can tell you about that. Knowing Vel and Roxie the way I do, I can tell you about that better than almost anybody. Just don't listen to a word either of them says.


End file.
